Passengers reminded to ‘check before you travel’ this Easter

Passengers planning to travel over the Easter bank holiday weekend are being reminded to check before they travel while our engineers deliver more than £5m of enhancements for Scotland’s railway.

Over 1,500 engineers will work nearly 30,000 staff-hours from the evening of Friday, April 14, to Tuesday, April 18, to replace and upgrade signalling systems and tracks on the West Coast main line.

At Motherwell new, modern signalling systems will be commissioned in the first phase of a two-year, £100m project to upgrade the signalling infrastructure in the area and increase capacity on Scotland railways.

New tracks and points (pieces of track that move to transfer trains from one line to another) will be installed at Carstairs in South Lanarkshire and at Polmadie, in Glasgow, while Engineers will also be working to refurbish and maintain bridges, level crossings and tracks elsewhere across Scotland.

David Dickson, ScotRail Alliance infrastructure director, said: “This is the latest phase of our Railway Upgrade Plan for Scotland’s railways and all of these projects are vital to maintaining reliable services and increasing capacity on our network.

“We understand these works may inconvenience some passengers and, while there’s never a good time to close the railway, bank holiday weekends provide us with an extended period of time to get major pieces of work done when passenger numbers have dropped significantly.”

Across Britain, Network Rail will deliver 200 projects and a £70m investment over the holiday period. More than 13,000 workers will be out in force working on some of the country’s largest infrastructure projects.

Over the Easter weekend, the majority of ScotRail trains across Scotland will be unaffected, but significant service alterations will be in place on some Lanarkshire routes. Full details are available at https://www.scotrail.co.uk/plan-your-journey/engineering-works

A bus service will be in place for TransPennine Express and Virgin Trains West Coast passengers between Carlisle and Glasgow Central.

CrossCountry and Virgin Trains East Coast will not run between Edinburgh and Glasgow Central. Customers are advised to use alternative lines between Edinburgh and Glasgow and buses will be in place between Motherwell and Glasgow Central.